Conference thebay::joyoflex

GNU - Gnu is Not Unix

    (I think)

Scott

GNU is "Gnu's Not Unix" (which I think is cheating)

Also are:

MINCE Is Not Complete Emacs

ZWEI Was Emacs Initially

XINU Is Not Unix

I think there's also an editor that claims it was never Emacs.

	Jon

It was pointed out to me that ADAP is recursive in its radio ads. 

They say (approximately):

	"Get what you need at ADAP auto discount parts."

Jack Wickwire

Firesign Theater has a line  "Department of Redundancy Department", 
which I felt was both funny and humorous.

Over the weekend I used a can of "chicken broth" in some cooking.
There were four or five items in the list of ingredients, the first of which
was "chicken broth".

Bob Fleischer

I must take issue with .3. If you look carefully at ADAP's
signs or receipts, you'll see that ADAP stands for
American Discount Auto Parts. I couldn't find any old ADAP
receipts just now; their ad in the yellow pages didn't say it;
but "American Discount Auto Parts" is listed at several locations
in my white pages.

Sam 

    
    	NEWS -- News, Editorials, Weather, Sports

    Somewhat late, but along the same topic....
    
    When I got my Robin upgrade for my vt100 (hows that for dating
    myself?), I received a large brown cardboard box with the desegnation
    VTxyz_something or other on the outside. Upon opening the box, I
    came across a pamphlet titled "VTxyz Installation", or somesuch.
    Upon opening the pamphlet, I found unpacking instructions whose
    first instruction was.....
    
    "Open the Box"!
    
    
    Mike
    

>    Upon opening the pamphlet, I found unpacking instructions whose
>    first instruction was.....
>
>    "Open the Box"!
    
    Was the second instruction "Read the Instructions."?

    
    Nope -- I imagine the second instruction was "Take out the
    instructions".
    
    Richard.

    How about, "Find the instructions."?

    My favorite recursive definition is for "mung", which is an acronym
    for "Mung Until No Good". This is the official MIT Tech Model Railroad
    Club definition, circa 1960. Accept no substitutes. 

    
    How about trying to translate "'Open the window!' she shouted, in
    Spanish." from English into Spanish.
    
    Richard.

    "�Abre la ventana!" cri�, en lengua castellana.
    
    [No dictionary to hand, so spellings dubious]
    
    b

    humph. Don't you think you've introduced an element of redundancy
    here?
    
    (I was looking for a more faithful translation).
    
    Richard.

    I was trying to make the nit picky (but, I think interesting) point
    that the word for spanish in spanish is not (always) espa�ol. Where
    I picked up my first smatterings of spanish, people spoke Catalan.
    Catalan is a real live language (not just something to help confuse
    the tourists). There are bookshops in Barcelona where most if not
    all books are in Catalan. St George's Day is `the day of the book',
    with a big discount on Catalan books. Menus, in cheapo restaurants,
    are usually exclusively in Catalan.
    
    Everyone (in cities) _can_ speak Castilian, but they speak it as
    a second language. I don't know what `open the window' is in Catalan,
    but it's not the sort of thing people would normally say in a second 
    language; so if someone _did_ say it in Castilian, it would be
    significant enough to warrant a bit of redundancy.
    
    Incidentally, is a language that had no word for itself conceivable?
    [just interested]
    
    b

    Re .-1
    
    >Incidentally, is a language that had no word for itself conceivable?
    
    C++ has a word for its predecessor, but requires an entire phrase
    for itself.  (Sorry.)
    
    American doesn't really have a word for itself; this meaning is
    frequently invented for this word, but not proposed for serious
    acceptance.  Perhaps it doesn't really require a word for itself
    because it's mostly English.
    
    When a language drifts far enough away from its parent, or from
    its "eldest" sibling, it tends to get a new name, such as
    Afrikaans.  Though I wonder if there's a name for the Papua New
    Guinea dialect of quasi-English.
    
    One reason that it's unlikely for a language to have no name for
    itself is that speakers of other languages eventually have to produce
    a name for the language in question, so it itself eventually gets
    a name for itself too....

    
    Re:  Recursive definitions

    Stare at a dictionary long enough and you'll eventually see that
    EVERY word in it has a recursive definition.
    (Indirectly.)
    (:-)

    G'day,
    
    Of course, simply its 'pidgin' or more strictly
    
    the official language of png is Melanesian Pidgin, leastways is a
    lingua franca 
    of png, is the official language of the png parliament.
    
    example
    Rev 1 v8 King James Bible
     I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord,
    which is 
    and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty
    
    
    Bikpela,God I Gat Olgeta Strong em i tok olsem: "Mi tasol mi paslain
    tru na mi 
    las tru." Em dispela God tasol, nau em i stap, na bipo tru em i stap,
    na bihain 
    bai em i kam.
    
     Derek